Tenchu: Return From Darkness
Posted September 1, 2004
Ninjas. You know you love 'em, so don't even try to deny it. Whether they're getting beat down in droves in recent video games like Viewtiful Joe or being misappropriated for various '90s family-friendly films, ninjas have been a staple of American culture for well over thirty years. Yet for most of that time, the image of the ninja that captured childrens' imaginations was that of games like Ninja Gaiden and Shinobi, sidescrollers where twitchy fingers were king. Even now, those franchises are being exhumed and resuscitated as primarily action titles. Historically, of course, ninjas were not the unstoppable killing machines that these games depict. They relied on achieving their goals unseen; the root meaning of "ninja" is "stealth," after all.
Enter Tenchu: Return From Darkness, a port of last year's PlayStation 2 release, Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven. The game is the third in a series where your goal, as in Metal Gear, is to infiltrate without being detected. Although rewarded for kills, your job is not to kill everyone you possibly can. It is far more likely that if you sneak in completely undetected and kill only those in your way, you will get a higher score than if you kill every single guard in the area and are spotted several times.
Gameplay:
When you start Tenchu, you have the option of playing as either Rikimaru (male) or Ayame (female), both of whom work for a Japanese feudal lord named Gohda. The game's story starts off somewhat slowly but builds into a battle of good versus evil. I say "story," but there are really a few. Both Rikimaru and Ayame have their own related storylines, while unlockable acupuncturist-by-day-assassin-for-hire-by-night Tesshu (also male) has a slightly shorter and less epic tale. There are nearly 30 missions in the game, and each has three different level layouts for replayability.
The game's focus is in one-hit "stealth kills" -- slicing an enemy's throat before they have a chance to react, let alone see you. There are a variety of different ways to prematurely end an enemy's existence on this mortal plane, and each has its own cutscene. For each stealth kill, you net between a quarter and one and a half "kuji," depending on the skill required to achieve it. For example, blowing a poison dart into the back of a guard's neck will only yield one quarter kuji, but killing a guard while approaching him from the front -- without being seen, mind you -- gets the full one and a half. Most of your stealth kills, however, will be one-pointers. Once you get nine of these you'll receive a special ninja skill, ranging from the ability to cling to the ceiling to performing a wall kick to even using mysterious Force-like powers to get enemies to attack their friends.
Scoring basically works like this: you begin with 450 points. Stealth kills are worth 20 points and regular kills (killing an enemy after they have seen you) are only worth five. In addition, every time you are seen, points are deducted from the 450. The first time costs 150, but subsequent instances are only 30. Finally, killing innocent civilians in your quest to exact "Heaven's punishment" carries heavy penalties, deducting a whopping 50 points each from your score and even zeroing out your kuji meter.
"That's great, Matt. But is it fun or what?" Well... yes and no. First and foremost, this is a game based on covert infiltration, and it requires patience over reflexes. While not a new concept by any means, it's still such a wild departure from most video games that some people just flat-out won't enjoy it. Beyond that, there are enough problems in Tenchu to prevent it from being even a truly great stealth game at that, and as a result it only ends up being slightly above average. One of the first problems you'll notice is the enemy AI. This is something that tends to plague these types of games, and Tenchu is no different. Now, obviously the game wouldn't be any fun if the first time you were spotted the guards wisely shouted your presence at the top of their lungs and every guard in the area came running, but as it stands now the pendulum probably swings too much in the opposite direction. Enemies have limited vision, but the way it's implemented is a bit wonky. I would not expect a guard to see me crouching next to a building 25 feet in front of them in the dead of night. I would, however, expect a guard to see me crouching two feet in front of them in a brightly-lit hallway, or hear the sound of my clearly-audible footsteps as I literally run up to them from behind, crouch for the last yard or so, then perform a stealth kill. Being spotted carries no real penalties, other than losing 30 points from your final score. If you do happen to be spotted, the guards will whistle for backup that will almost certainly never come, and you'll have to fight a battle that requires very little finesse to win.
If you're playing seriously, most of the time you're spotted, it's because you're fighting with the camera. All sneaking around is done in "stealth mode" (holding the left trigger), which causes you to crouch, crawl, sidle against walls, and other things. It also causes what is a decent camera up until then (except when fighting in close quarters) to become completely frustrating, with fixed angles that may or may not be useful to you. Trying to be stealthy is especially irritating in buildings with many doors, because there's just no good way to see what's down a hallway perpendicular to the door. There is a manual camera, but it's not as helpful as it could have been since using it prevents you from moving. Possibly to compensate for the camera difficulties, a "ki meter" is included that tells you your proximity to enemies. It goes a long way, but an improved camera would be much more helpful. I got frustrated with this every now and then and just decided to rampage through levels, stealth be damned. This brute force method isn't exactly elegant, and you won't acquire any special ninja skills if you do this for every level, but as long as you beat the boss of the stage, you'll still go on to the next, with your only punishment being a "thug" rating.
The big selling point of Return From Darkness as compared to its PS2 cousin is its voice-enabled Xbox Live capability. Players can either team up in special multiplayer maps (an option I always like to see) or fight against one another in a deathmatch. Naturally, two players in the same room can also access this content. Expect most multiplayer to be cooperative, however, as you'll quickly tire of the deathmatch.
Graphics:
Being a port from the PlayStation 2, the graphics won't wow you, but it looks okay. I thought I was in for it when I saw the heavily-compressed opening video, but in-game scenes look fine, and it does support progressive. While there were minor instances of clipping (dragging a body through a pole, for example), the realistic detail that went into the faces and the nice-looking character designs make up for it.
Audio:
The music is fairly mediocre. Not good, not horrible, but definitely nothing I would consider listening to away from the game. The English voices fair similarly; okay, but not fantastic. The narrator, incidentally, sounds like the host of one of those Sci-Fi Channel "documentaries" on Roswell or whatever. As is usually the case, the Japanese voices are better, the downside of that mode being that you probably won't understand some of the funnier comments the guards make when they think no one is around unless you speak the language. Dolby Digital is supported, although it isn't really put to a lot of use -- it is, after all, a mostly silent game.
Conclusion:
A game that fails to live up to its potential, Tenchu: Return From Darkness is plagued by a sometimes frustrating camera and subpar enemy AI -- problems that should have been corrected in the year between the PS2 and Xbox releases. Ravenous stealth fans that are looking for something, anything clandestine will want to pick this up, but more casual fans should look into another franchise for now. Rent it.
Enter Tenchu: Return From Darkness, a port of last year's PlayStation 2 release, Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven. The game is the third in a series where your goal, as in Metal Gear, is to infiltrate without being detected. Although rewarded for kills, your job is not to kill everyone you possibly can. It is far more likely that if you sneak in completely undetected and kill only those in your way, you will get a higher score than if you kill every single guard in the area and are spotted several times.
Gameplay:
When you start Tenchu, you have the option of playing as either Rikimaru (male) or Ayame (female), both of whom work for a Japanese feudal lord named Gohda. The game's story starts off somewhat slowly but builds into a battle of good versus evil. I say "story," but there are really a few. Both Rikimaru and Ayame have their own related storylines, while unlockable acupuncturist-by-day-assassin-for-hire-by-night Tesshu (also male) has a slightly shorter and less epic tale. There are nearly 30 missions in the game, and each has three different level layouts for replayability.
The game's focus is in one-hit "stealth kills" -- slicing an enemy's throat before they have a chance to react, let alone see you. There are a variety of different ways to prematurely end an enemy's existence on this mortal plane, and each has its own cutscene. For each stealth kill, you net between a quarter and one and a half "kuji," depending on the skill required to achieve it. For example, blowing a poison dart into the back of a guard's neck will only yield one quarter kuji, but killing a guard while approaching him from the front -- without being seen, mind you -- gets the full one and a half. Most of your stealth kills, however, will be one-pointers. Once you get nine of these you'll receive a special ninja skill, ranging from the ability to cling to the ceiling to performing a wall kick to even using mysterious Force-like powers to get enemies to attack their friends.
Scoring basically works like this: you begin with 450 points. Stealth kills are worth 20 points and regular kills (killing an enemy after they have seen you) are only worth five. In addition, every time you are seen, points are deducted from the 450. The first time costs 150, but subsequent instances are only 30. Finally, killing innocent civilians in your quest to exact "Heaven's punishment" carries heavy penalties, deducting a whopping 50 points each from your score and even zeroing out your kuji meter.
"That's great, Matt. But is it fun or what?" Well... yes and no. First and foremost, this is a game based on covert infiltration, and it requires patience over reflexes. While not a new concept by any means, it's still such a wild departure from most video games that some people just flat-out won't enjoy it. Beyond that, there are enough problems in Tenchu to prevent it from being even a truly great stealth game at that, and as a result it only ends up being slightly above average. One of the first problems you'll notice is the enemy AI. This is something that tends to plague these types of games, and Tenchu is no different. Now, obviously the game wouldn't be any fun if the first time you were spotted the guards wisely shouted your presence at the top of their lungs and every guard in the area came running, but as it stands now the pendulum probably swings too much in the opposite direction. Enemies have limited vision, but the way it's implemented is a bit wonky. I would not expect a guard to see me crouching next to a building 25 feet in front of them in the dead of night. I would, however, expect a guard to see me crouching two feet in front of them in a brightly-lit hallway, or hear the sound of my clearly-audible footsteps as I literally run up to them from behind, crouch for the last yard or so, then perform a stealth kill. Being spotted carries no real penalties, other than losing 30 points from your final score. If you do happen to be spotted, the guards will whistle for backup that will almost certainly never come, and you'll have to fight a battle that requires very little finesse to win.
If you're playing seriously, most of the time you're spotted, it's because you're fighting with the camera. All sneaking around is done in "stealth mode" (holding the left trigger), which causes you to crouch, crawl, sidle against walls, and other things. It also causes what is a decent camera up until then (except when fighting in close quarters) to become completely frustrating, with fixed angles that may or may not be useful to you. Trying to be stealthy is especially irritating in buildings with many doors, because there's just no good way to see what's down a hallway perpendicular to the door. There is a manual camera, but it's not as helpful as it could have been since using it prevents you from moving. Possibly to compensate for the camera difficulties, a "ki meter" is included that tells you your proximity to enemies. It goes a long way, but an improved camera would be much more helpful. I got frustrated with this every now and then and just decided to rampage through levels, stealth be damned. This brute force method isn't exactly elegant, and you won't acquire any special ninja skills if you do this for every level, but as long as you beat the boss of the stage, you'll still go on to the next, with your only punishment being a "thug" rating.
The big selling point of Return From Darkness as compared to its PS2 cousin is its voice-enabled Xbox Live capability. Players can either team up in special multiplayer maps (an option I always like to see) or fight against one another in a deathmatch. Naturally, two players in the same room can also access this content. Expect most multiplayer to be cooperative, however, as you'll quickly tire of the deathmatch.
Graphics:
Being a port from the PlayStation 2, the graphics won't wow you, but it looks okay. I thought I was in for it when I saw the heavily-compressed opening video, but in-game scenes look fine, and it does support progressive. While there were minor instances of clipping (dragging a body through a pole, for example), the realistic detail that went into the faces and the nice-looking character designs make up for it.
Audio:
The music is fairly mediocre. Not good, not horrible, but definitely nothing I would consider listening to away from the game. The English voices fair similarly; okay, but not fantastic. The narrator, incidentally, sounds like the host of one of those Sci-Fi Channel "documentaries" on Roswell or whatever. As is usually the case, the Japanese voices are better, the downside of that mode being that you probably won't understand some of the funnier comments the guards make when they think no one is around unless you speak the language. Dolby Digital is supported, although it isn't really put to a lot of use -- it is, after all, a mostly silent game.
Conclusion:
A game that fails to live up to its potential, Tenchu: Return From Darkness is plagued by a sometimes frustrating camera and subpar enemy AI -- problems that should have been corrected in the year between the PS2 and Xbox releases. Ravenous stealth fans that are looking for something, anything clandestine will want to pick this up, but more casual fans should look into another franchise for now. Rent it.